Читать книгу The Story of Terrible Terry - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 6

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After Terry had thoroughly filled his stomach and had quieted his conscience, he entered the little three room shack on Henry Street that was home to him. It was well past midnight.

Andy, his uncle, called out to him from the bedroom. “That you, Terry?”

“Yeah. What you want?”

“It’s late for you to be comin’ in.”

“Yeah, but it’s Hallowe’en.”

“Did you go to school today, Terry?”

“Nah. They shouldn’t have school on Hallowe’en, Andy. Man, it only comes once a year—they should give us a holiday and then I wouldn’t have to sneak off.”

Andy sighed. “You need somebody to give yuh a good talkin’ to,” he said, sleepily. “I’m beginnin’ to realize I ain’t no hand in bringin’ up children. Now you’ll git it good from your teacher tomorrer.”

Terry was intent on kicking off both shoes at once and holding his feet in such a manner that he could aim directly at the opposite wall. When this was successfully accomplished, he said, “I should worry about teachers, Andy. They get tired of telling me things after awhile. What I need is a new pair of shoes.”

“Eh, yes,” said Andy, with a more pronounced sigh that time. “Out o’ my next pay I’ll get you a pair, Terry. It’ll be a full pay.” Terry had often heard about full pays, but they seldom materialized. Andy loved to take a day or so out of the week in order to do the things he loved to do. In summertime it was fishing and in winter, hunting. For this reason his pays were seldom full, as he expressed it, and yet there was something quaint and lovable about him. His weakness for loafing on working days did not make people like him the less. Certainly Terry never wavered in his affection for his uncle because of it—he loved him the more.

As far back as Terry could remember, Andy had had many occupations. He had been gardener for many of Bridgeboro’s wealthier families, but because of his indolent habits, he gradually found it difficult to get a job. He had drifted from one thing to another—dishwashing in restaurants, cleaning in office buildings and now he was at the paper factory as a sort of handy man.

Little was known of Terry’s mother except that she was Andy’s sister and had come from Connecticut to keep house for her brother after the death of her husband. Her arrival with the then infant Terry was unheralded and at night, and the next morning she took her place, simply, in the life of Henry Street, announcing that she would take in sewing for a living.

Terry was accepted as just another child in the neighborhood until after his mother’s death two years later. It was then that Henry Street decided that he was remarkably different from other children, being able to think up more mischief than poor, inefficient Andy was able to cope with. And before the child reached the amazing age of four, it was told, the broken windows that his uncle had paid for in and around the lower part of Bridgeboro, would have totalled a nice, tidy sum.

It was no great wonder then that after he had been in school two years, one of the lower primary teachers had spoken of him as “that terrible Terry Dunn.” He well earned that appellation one fall day by piling a great bunch of wet newspapers in the hot-air furnace when the janitor was out of the basement. It has often been told since how the thick smoke caused a near-panic and after a hasty fire-drill the entire school was dismissed for the afternoon.

Terry received more than an afternoon’s holiday. He was suspended for a week and after making a voluntary apology explained that he had just wanted to go fishing and couldn’t think of any other way of getting out of school after the noon luncheon period was over.

And now another Hallowe’en had passed for the clock had just struck one. Terry sighed regretfully and dangled his feet against the legs of the rickety chair upon which he sat. He was not yet tired enough to go to bed, he told himself. High days and holidays were short days indeed.

Andy suddenly appeared in the doorway, stooped and trying to look severe. His nightshirt hanging a trifle below a threadbare and abbreviated bathrobe had the effect of making him look shorter than he really was. And in the dim gaslight his small, bald head stood out in bold relief.

“Ain’t you never goin’ to git to bed tonight?” he asked Terry, and walked over to an old red plush chair in the far corner of the room.

“Man, I had too much fun today, Andy,” the boy answered with a low chuckle. “Some fun and a good scare I had too.” Very elaborately, he went over the narrative just as he had done for Pip and Dinky.

“You’ll get into trouble if you ain’t careful,” Andy warned him.

“Leave it to me,” said Terry, with a shake of his head. “That Mr. Ellsworth was nice to me even if he is a scout, sort of. But I didn’t like that Roland bird, nohow.”

“Roland, eh—Roland. Who is that, Terry?” Andy asked, glancing at the shabby little table that stood between them.

“Roland Terhune,” answered Terry. “You worked for some Terhunes once, didn’t you?”

Andy nodded, wearily.

“Well, it’s the grandson that I saw tonight. Mr. Ellsworth said we should be friends ’cause we both got red hair—man! Can you imagine me and that guy shooting marbles together and breaking windows, huh? Oh boy! The way he was all dolled up in that scout suit’d give you a pain in the neck. He didn’t say anything but he was high-hattin’ me like everything.”

Andy said nothing for a moment, but looked hopelessly around the humble room with its few sticks of worn out furniture. Now and then his lip quivered a trifle as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t. Finally he stood up.

“Maybe—maybe,” he stammered, “maybe it’d be good for you to make friends with a boy like that Ter—Terhune. Maybe it’d be good for you to get into that scout business, too, huh, Terry?”

Terry scowled. “Man, are you getting that scout bug, too! I wouldn’t join them, no matter what!”

Andy looked at the boy, appealingly. “It wouldn’t hurt you none to join ’em, Terry,” he said, wagging his small head from side to side. “And it might be luck to know a fella like that Terhune boy—rich folks like he’s got could do a powerful lot for a poor boy like you are. If you didn’t have me any more it’d be nice to know you got friends that won’t ’xactly see you starve.”

“I’d like to see myself starve,” said Terry, with perfect assurance. “Man, I’m not so crazy!”

“Crazy or not, that happens to lots o’ boys that are left alone in the world and ain’t got much education,” said Andy, shuffling back toward the bedroom. “They turn dishonest just to eat and sleep and then what happens? So take my advice, Terry and be a good boy and try to know people what’ll help you up in the world. Lookit where I am for loafin’ all my life—you don’t want to be like me, do you?”

Tears of affection were brimming in Terry’s eyes. “Aw, you ain’t so bad, Andy,” he said, with difficulty. “Even if you ain’t made any money, you’ve been kinder to me, I bet, than rich people would. Man, I wouldn’t care if I didn’t ever have any money, just so long as I’d be like you—you know—never getting mad at people or anything.”

“That’s why I can’t do anything with you, Terry, boy,” Andy said, fondly. He choked audibly, then: “C’m on and git to bed—you’ll not be fit to go to school in the morning.”

Terry yawned and pattered barefoot over the rough board floor after his uncle. “They shouldn’t have school the day after Hallowe’en, Andy,” he said, disgustedly. “Man, it only comes once a year and if they’d make it a holiday I wouldn’t have to take it off myself.”